In a Tube

Something I'm sure every traveler loves doing is wandering into a foreign supermarket and boggling at some of the produces that in this foreign land are commonplace. Having visited Malaysia, Japan, China, Tibet, Nepal, Iceland, Chile, Argentina, USA and Scotland (seriously, Scotland has things in jars that are just wrong), I'm pretty sure I found something in Swede that takes the cake, the platter, and the whole table service.

'Ost' is cheese. Generic cheese. Now, I can understand adding skink - ham - to cheese, as that is a well-loved sandwich combination and when toasted they are clearly two items of food that were meant to be. Bacon too makes sense when added to cheese. Bacon makes sense with nearly everything.

But in a tube?

However. 

But. 

You see.

Räk being prawn. Who the hell puts cheese, generic nothing no name cheese, together with prawns? Only people who have a sense of 'taste' that is clearly a blasphemy against nature, that's who. Only people who are attempting to ruin the very fabric of the universe, that's who.

And who then, you must ask yourself, who then would take this monsterous combination AND STICK IT IN A TUBE?

THE SWEDES, THAT'S WHO.

ICELAND! Redux

I've loved Iceland from afar my whole, fell in love with Reykjavík and the tiny bit of the wilderness I managed to see last year, and can confirm that the love remains just as strong. This is being typed in Café Babalu, my favourite little nook for a chai latte, amazing carrot cake and stable wifi, and I'm nearly squirming with contentment.

It began before we'd even left Scotland.

Seats 4F and 4D. Are you sure? Are you...wait, let me see the boarding slip. Yeah. Those are our seat numbers...are you sure?

We were bumped up to first class without anyone telling us until we were forced to conclude that there wasn't anywhere else on the plane that we could sit. The headrests had hygiene cloths named after various gods and their titles. J swapped his from Freya to Thor at the suggestion of a fellow passenger. Free food! Massive seats! USB Power! Pillows! Blankets! Leg room! It was weird and bizarre and we never really relaxed as we were waiting for the stewards to tell us they'd found our real seats.

It's a completely different world without the blanket snow. The supermarket was just as perplexing as last time.

PYLSUSINNEP. Sounds like an Egyptian riff on a Lovecraft monster. The Egyptian Sausage Demon. Not sure if it's mayo, mustard or tomato-based. It looks like a bottle of glue, to be honest.

As far as we can tell, this is just chocolate. Not even with a fancy filling. Just chocolate. Except there's a faux Michael Jackson endorsing this chocolate. Draw your own conclusions.

....BUT WHY?!?!??!?!

"What do you think of Michael Bay?"

These ones aren't too bad, to be honest. Humour is always a plus. Snide little put downs (which may easily be tongue-in-cheek, but without knowing the owner of the voice nor having any emotive modifiers to guide my interpretation I have know way of knowing this) are not.

Honestly, you people.

I love the search string section in site stats.

Christmas Disturbia

Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Famous for its Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas markets for the non-Deutsch speaker. Also a very very ridiculous place. It's a complete medieval town, and dude, wtf. It's like walking around a gingerbread city, or a fairytale. It's like Sovereign Hill, ONLY IT IS REAL (little Victoria reference there).

They take Christmas seriously here, and today I went to the Christmas Museum, which is housed in a MASSIVE INSANE LABYRINTHINE MANDELBRÖT Christmas decoration store. I mean massive. I qot lost. Several times.

I stole a few fantastic photos, but unfortunately the connect at this hostel does not like uploading, so I'll restrict pictographs to only this.



HOW MANY EYES DO SNOWMEN NEED?!?!?!?!

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

So Ben Peek hightails it off to the US of A, gets pished on the 4th of July and demands my postal address. He's going to send me a postcard, he says.

There was a postcard in the package, he did not lie. There was also a t-shirt.



BEST. T-SHIRT. EVAH.

Immediately showed it to mother and brother, both of whom shared my reaction: astonished gleeful cackling.

Thanks, Dr Peek. You da man. <3

The Offerings the Saint Returned

It is inevitable that when moving house and delving into boxes and drawers that haven't been disturbed for years you will discover (or, more accurately, rediscover) items that you weren't exactly expecting.

See Exhibit A:



These teeth belong to me.

About whether they came from my mouth, however, I shall offer no comment.

When The Unconscious Drives

Some of us do peculiar things while we sleep, such as talk or fight or walk or make sandwiches etc etc etc. Some of us even snore. I have only been accused of snoring. On occasion. That said, I have from time to time found evidence of a rather peculiar nocturnal activity. That is to say, on waking, I have on occasion found evidence of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) beneath my finger nail. It would appear that my unconscious is taking care of my aural hygiene while I am not driving the body.

This is kind of weird.

Albeit not actually of any concern. Just a little bit gross.

This hasn't happened for a little while, and I had completely forgotten about this bizarre behaviour until today. I was changing the sheets on my bed and discovered a small colony of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) crusted on my cotton blanket.

I can only conclude that my unconscious noted that I had noted its activities due to the physical traces it left behind, and concluded that the best way to continue operations was to somehow negate these traces, ergo, covering my finger with the blanket so that the result of such nocturnal excavations would not be so readily apparent in my fingernails.

This is also kind of weird.

And a little bit irritating, given that earwax stains, and blankets are far more hassle to clean.

Dear Unconscious, I hope you are listening. Stop that shit.